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Americanism Triumphant. 



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AN ADDRESS 



before the 



State Teachers' Association of Pennsylvania, 

at Gettysburg, Pa,, 
Tuesday, July 4, (899. 



By 



Hon. MARRIOTT BROSIUS. 



Lancaster, Pa. 

The New Era Printing Company 

J899 




Glass. 
Book. 



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Americanism Triumphant* 



AN ADDRESS 



before the 



State Teachers* Association of Pennsylvania^ 

at Gettysburg, Pa., 
Tuesday, July 4, t899. 



By 

v/ 

Hon. MARRIOTT BROSIUS, 



Lancaster, Pa. 

The New Era Printing Company 

1899 



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4.1 881 







AMERICANISM TRIUMPHANT. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: The day, the 
place and the character of the assem- 
bly combine to make this an interest- 
ing and impressive occasion. This to 
the American patriot is a holy day, 
reverently dedicated to the commemo- 
ration of the birth of the Republic. On 
this day was born the American con- 
ception of political liberty. The De- 
claration of Independence was a for- 
mal notification to all the world that 
at last a nation was to be hrought 
forth, conceived in liberty and dedi- 
cated to the equality of man, an event 
of such transcendent importance that 
Webster thought it infinitely exceeded 
that for which the great English poet 
invoked 

"A muse of fire, a kingdom for a stage, 
Princes to act, 
And monarchs to behold the swelling 

scene." 
This place is the Mecca of American 
patriotism. If there is a spot within the 
bounds of the republic sacred to heroic 
memory, where the citizen can come 
to learn the lessons of right citizen- 
ship, liberty and duty, it is where the 
earth is hallowed by the dust of he- 
roes and martyrs who sealed their de- 
votion with their blood. 

The field of Gettysburg has a three- 
fold title to its world-wide renown. 
Here was witnessed the high tide of 
the Rebellion. From the awful holo- 
caust of those three memorable days 
which crimsoned hillside and plain 
with the ruddy currents of heroes, the 
most stupendous blunder in history, 
the slave-holders' Confederacy, mor- 
tally wounded and broken-hearted, 
ebbed to its death. 



(4) 

Here too was witnessed the high tide 
of American heroism. Citizen soldiers 
by their impetuous daringextorted the 
admiration and homage of the world, 
as they stood with iron front to re- 
ceive the thunderbolts of battle, that 
ploughed the fields, planted them with 
heroic dead and watered them with 
patriot blood; or as in the wild fury of 
the charge they breasted floods of fire 
that dashed themselves in pieces on 
the rocks of Union valor and ebbed in 
bloody foam and spray. 

Here too it is thought by some was 
recorded the high tide of American 
letters. Edward Everett, the polished 
scholar and classic orator of New Eng- 
land, said to President Lincoln the day 
following the dedication of the Na- 
tional Cemetery: "I would be glad if 
I could flatter myself that I came as 
near the central idea of the occasion 
in two hours as you did in two min- 
utes." A friend of mine well observed: 
"Those simple sentences of our mar- 
tyred President are imbedded in our 
national literature as one of the 
brightest gems in its crown." 

This assembly is remarkable in its 
personnel. Patriotic in feeling, edu- 
cational in profession and purpose, 
moral in spirit, it stands for the high- 
est and best in American life. The 
school-master is abroad. The light of 
learning is on every hill. The flag 
floats over the school house. Memorial 
day teaches the lessons of heroism. Na- 
tional day now observed in some of 
our colleges introduces instruction in 
patriotism in the college curriculum. 
Independence day keeps the holy fire 
burning on the altar of country. What 
a noble sequence of institutions and 
observances for instruction in patriot- 
ism ! What a grand chapter in the 
splendid institutes of American educa- 
tion! A beautiful unfolding of the 
American idea of popular instruction. 

General education is the sure founda- 
tion of popular government. School 



(5) 

teachers are the makers of republics; 
they guide the march of intellect; 
carve the marble of mind; build em- 
pires of brains; make glad the waste 
places of ignorance with the light of 
knowledge. It was the saying of Ma- 
homet "that the ink of the scholar and 
the blood of the martyr are equal." 
Robert C. Winthrop added, that noth- 
ing but the ink of the scholar, that is, 
the toil of the teacher, can preserve 
what the blood of the martyr has pur- 
chased. 

/ It is the beautiful thought of John 
,->' Fiske . that "In the roaring loom of 
^■^ time the endless web of events is wo- 

ven, each strand making more and 
more visible the living garment of 
God." Carrying the fine figure of the 
weaver into our thought to-day, let us 
cherish our public schools as the 
looms, and our teachers as the weav- 
ers who weave the wondrous web of 
destiny for the nation. 1 

The great preponderance of ladies in 
this assembly emphasizes the fact that 
American women are conspicuous fac- 
tors in our splendid system of public 
schools. Here we are walking close to 
Nature's side, as the signal success of 
their work as teachers demonstrates. 
Then, how grandly are they achieving 
their intellectual independence. The 
idea is so cordially accepted by our 
people that it may be fairly listed in 
the catalogue of Americanisms, "That 
the only true measure of a woman's 
right to education is her capacity for 
receiving it." This noble sentiment of 
Canon Kingsley finds a fitting com- 
panion in the fine utterance of our 
President the other day at Holyoke, 
that "An educated womanhood is an 
open school for citizenship every day 
of the year." To woman's pluck and 
brains college and university have 
capitulated. No cherubim with flaming 
sword drives her from the tree of 
knowledge in this blessed land of ours. 
Her triumphs in scholarship have es- 



(6) 

tablished her title to vhe best opportu- 
nities for education the country af- 
fords. Not only at home, but abroad, 
American women are beginning to be 
appreciated at their true intellectual 
worth. A New England Theologian 
said to a German Professor, that the 
ablest refutation of "Edwards on the 
Will" that was ever written was the 
work of an American woman, the 
daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher. The 
worthy Teuton raised both hands in 
undisguised astonishment, and ex- 
claimed, "You have a woman that can 
write an able refutation of Edwards 
on the Will? God forgive Columbus 
for discovering Amertca." 

"Americanism" is a word I use to 
express that splendid aggregation of 
principles, ethical, political and eco- 
nomic, which have characterized the 
evolution of the American republic 
and been exemplified in the constitu- 
tions, laws, civil policy, moral devel- 
opment and national spirit during the 
century and a quarter of our existence 
in the family of nations. The limits 
of this occasion forbid an allusion to 
more than a very few of the most 
characteristic principles which have 
marked or will mark signal triumphs 
In our national life. 

Civil Liberty. 
The establishment of civil liberty 
was the first triumph of Americanism 
on this continent. When we consider 
the genesis of this great principle of 
the rights of man, we get a glimpse of 
the meaning of Charles Francis Adams 
when he said: "The passage of the Red 
Sea was not a more momentous event 
than the voyage of the Mayflower." 
This continent, which Dr. Storrs said 
was picked out of the ocean on the 
point of a needle, was to be the arena 
in which the experiment of civil lib- 
erty was to achieve its final success. 
Columbus was the first Pilgrim father. 
He gave us the land on which the 



r 



(7) 

struggle for the rights of man was to 
pursue its triumphal march from Lex- 
ington to Appomattox. He made pos- 
sible Washington, Jefferson and Lin- 
coln. The first, it is said, made the 
republic possible, the second made it 
popular, and the last made it perma- 
nent. He was the forerunner of the 
heroes and martyrs who have shed 
fadeless glory on the long, weary and 
blood-stained way from Plymouth 
Rock to Gettysburg, from the Pilgrim 
Charter to the Declaration, the Con- 
stitution, and the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation. The merit of Columbus, 
however, I cannot now consider, but 
must relinquish even so alluring a 
theme to the Irishman who said it 
were well to do a little more honor to 
Columbus and a little less to St. Pat- 
rick, for the former had done more 
for Irishmen than the latter; "for," 
said he, "St. Patrick discovered a 
country the Irish could not rule, but 
Columbus discovered one they could 
rule." 

The Pilgrim Covenant executed on 
that stormy winter night in the cabin 
of the Mayflower contained the germ 
of popular government. It was a no- 
table instrument. John Adams said it 
was founded on reason and revelation. 
These were its words: "In the pres^ 
ence of God and one another we do 
agree that all the laws, ordinances, 
acts and constitutions which shall be 
made from time to time by the major- 
ity shall be binding upon all, and to 
them we will yield due submission and 
obedience." Among American consti- 
tutions this was the Pilgrim father. 
Out of it came the town meeting which 
was the first governing body in Amer- 
ican politics. To establish and main- 
tain the principle of this covenant in 
American government has been the 
pursuit of statesmen, has evoked the 
grandest exertions of the patriot and 
the most heroic achievements of the 



(8) 

soldier. The story is grand and thrill- 
ing, a splendid epic of liberty; a sub- 
lime triumph of Americanism; for the 
Pilgrim Covenant still lives in the 
Constitution of the United States, and 
its spirit animates a system of govern- 
ment which is the proudest achieve- 
ment of political genius; and whose 
distinguishing characteristics are no- 
where more finely stated than in "the 
words of a late lamented statesman 
and jurist: "A government where 
Law with the civic crown on his brow, 
wearing the judicial ermine, treading 
the pathway of our civilization with 
no iron heel, and gently, with unmail- 
ed hand, leads forth Liberty as his 
wedded wife; and she, when asked for 
her most precious jewels, points to her 
happy children looking up with loving 
hearts to the honored parents of their 

peace and joy."'^ 
«■ 
Religious Liberty. 

Among the legends inscribed on the 
panels of the inner front of the Water 
Gate at the World's Fair at Chicago 
was this: "Toleration in Religion the 
best fruit of the last four centuries." 
The beneficent principle of "private 
judgment" revived by the Reforma- 
tion, that great appeal from the judg- 
ment of the Church to the conscience 
of man, received the warmest hospi- 
tality in the new world, though its ful- 
lest development was postponed many 
years. I say "revived by the Reforma- 
tion," for it is interesting to note that 
absolute religious toleration prevailed 
in Greece and Rome at the beginning 
of the Christian era. The manner in 
which their various faiths were re- 
garded by the people of that age made 
toleration easy. The masses thought 
all religions equally true, the philoso- 
phers thought them equally false, and 
the magistrates thought them equally 
useful. In the fourth century the Em- 
peror Galerius enunciated the true 
doctrine in his edict respecting the 



(9) 

Christians, "We permit them there- 
fore freely to profess their private 
opinions and to assemble in their con- 
venticles without fear of molestation." 
This suggested to Charles Francis 
Adams "that in the matter of religious 
tolerance the world has struggled back 
to where it was when Paul preached 
on Mars Hill." 

It must ever remain a poignant re- 
gret that the founders of New Eng- 
land, though schooled in the princi- 
ples of resistance, both to arbitrary 
civil power and ecclesiastical autho- 
rity, yet carried with them the taint 
of religious bigotry which marred the 
otherwise spotless raiment of the set- 
tlers of Massachusetts colony. Reli- 
gious toleration was not born at Ply- 
mouth Rock. So far from it indeed 
that a distinguished statesman of Mas- 
sachusetts has said that in this re- 
spect her record is only less discredit- 
able than that of Spain. There was 
one prayer the liberty-loving Puritans 
did not pray; the Universal Prayer of 
Pope: 

"Let not my weak, unknowing hand 

Presume Thy bolts to throw 
And deal damnation 'round the land 
To each I judge Thy foe." 

But the Quaker and the Baptist and 
the plain German sects of Pennsylva- 
nia leavened the loaf, and our reli- 
gion soon became Americanized, as Dr. 
Holmes suggests, as did our politics 
and government, and the great princi- 
ple of religious toleration became bet- 
ter understood and more firmly estab- 
lished in the United States than in any 
other country. We believe with Lieber 
that conscience lies beyond the reach 
of government, that liberty of worship 
is one of the primordial rights of man. 
David Dudley Field suggested that if 
we had nothing else to boast of we 
could claim with justice "that first 
among the nations we made it a matter 
of organic law that the relations be- 



(10) 

tween man and his Maker were a pri- 
vate concern into which other men had 
no right to intrude." The provisions in 
the Constitutions of all the States and 
in that of the United States prohibiting 
religious tests, which Dr. Eliot, of 
Harvard College, says gave the United 
States the leadership among the na- 
tions in dissociating theological opin- 
ions and political rights, are the ex- 
pression of the common thought of 
Americans that religious restrictions 
imposed by human tribunals upon the 
consciences of men are "impious en- 
croachments upon the prerogatives of 
God and the liberties of men." 

That religious liberty has had a con- 
spicuous agency in American progress 
no one doubts. It has promoted con- 
ditions which invited enterprise, stimu- 
lated intellectual growth, advanced 
moral development and secured human 
happiness; results which can only pro- 
ceed from that unfettered mind and 
conscience enjoyed by the people of 
the United States, and which cannot be 
better described than by borrowing the 
words of Henry Buckle which he mis- 
applied to another country, saying: 
"That of all countries ours is the one 
where popular liberty is settled on the 
widest basis; where each man is most 
able to say what he thinks; where 
every one can propagate his own opin- 
ions; where religious persecution is 
little known and the unchecked play 
and flow of the human mind may be 
clearly seen; where the profession of 
heresy is least dangerous and the prac- 
tice of dissent most common; where 
hostile creeds flourish side by side and 
rise and decay without disturbance ac- 
cording to the wants of the people, un- 
affected by the wishes of the church 
and uncontrolled by the authority of 
the State." 

Such conditions of unrestricted free- 
dom explain and emphasize the sug- 
gestion of Goldwin Smith that "not de- 



(11) 

mocracy in America, but free Chris- 
tianity, is tlie real liey to the study of 
the people and their institutions." Not 
that Christianity is in any legal sense 
"a part of the law of the land" as has 
been frequently asserted, for no man 
was ever indicted in a criminal court 
for not loving his neighbor as himself; 
still the spirit of Christian liberty and 
freedom of conscience universally pre- 
vails and affords a graphic illustration 
in an important direction of American- 
ism triumphant. 

International Peace. 
There are some principles of Ameri- 
canism that are yet in the making and 
belong to the category of the unper- 
formed, but are yet to be triumphant. 
Here prophecy invites us; the unper- 
formed commands us. Prophet, Seer 
and Poet have spoken: 
"Years of the unperformed! Tour horizon 
rises. I see it parting away for 
more august dramas; 
I see not America only. I see not only 
Liberty's nation, but other nations 
preparing; 
I see tremendous entrances and exits, I 
see new combinations, I see the 
solidarity of races; 
I see that force advancing with irre- 
sistible power on the world's stage." 
One of the coming triumphs of 
Americanism is international peace. In 
the promotion of this consummation 
the American Republic has been easily 
foremost among the nations. In one 
hundred and seven years, from the 
adoption of the Constitution to 1896, 
Dr. Eliot suggests the United States 
has had only four and a quarter years 
of international war, while within the 
same period they have been a party 
to forty-seven arbitrations, more than 
half of all that have taken place in the 
modern world. Some of these tribunals 
of peace composed differences of the 
gravest character and adjusted ques- 
tions of the greatest magnitude, de- 
monstrating the possibility and desir- 



(12) 

ability of averting the horrors of war 
by an appeal to reason in the settle- 
ment of international controversies. 
Along this line a glory radiant with 
light from heaven awaits the American 
people if they continue in the vanguard 
of the nations, in the agitation of the 
greatest undertaking now engaging the 
thought of the Christian world, the 
establishment of an international 
tribunal of arbitration. On this re- 
alization, civilization builds a great 
hope. Soldier and sage, philosopher 
and statesman, join hands in pushing 
forward the splendid consummation 
which will hasten the great 

"far off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

The millennium will visibly advance 
when by common consent the sword 
shall rust in its sheath, the cannon's 
bi'azen tongue be dumb, and the truce 
of God proclaimed throughout the 
civilized world. The enlightened senti- 
ment of mankind deprecates war, and 
surely the American people, who have 
tasted of its bitterness, instructed by 
experience, by the memory of its in- 
humanity, its ghastly horrors, its 
terrible compensations, will not lag 
in the movement which is marshaling 
the conscience of Christendom in ag- 
gressive opposition to its continuance. 
Humane, Christian sentiments are be- 
ing exchanged by civilized powers, 
flying to and fro like mighty shuttles 
weaving a web of concord among the 
nations, and the world's peace will be 
the ultimate outcome despite the re- 
cent increase in the armaments of the 
great powers. The United States must 
keep the lead in the great crusade. The 
honor of America and her greatest 
service to the human race lie in that 
achievement. It is the gate of mercy 
and blessing. Let us not rest until we 
open it to mankind and mark another 
splendid triumph of Americanism by 



( 13 ) 

ushering in the glorious day by pro- 
phets foretold: 
"When the war-drums beat no longer and 

the battle-flags are furled, 
In the parliament of man, the federation 

of the world." 

National Altruism. 
Another Americanism which is to be 
triumphant is the great principle of 
National Altruism in the exemplifi- 
cation of which the United States is 
leading the world. It seems from ob- 
servation of the course of history that 
in the providential order one or an- 
other nation has been selected to rep- 
resent the dominant principle of an 
era or the controlling spirit of an age. 
We behold to-day a new power loom- 
ing above the world's horizon to be- 
come the chosen nation, crowned with 
leadership, the evangel of the new 
gospel of National Altruism, the light- 
bearer to all the continents and the 
islands of the sea. That new power, 
nay that power already manifest, need 
I name it! Archbishop Ireland says 
American hearts quiver, loving it. 
"My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 
Of thee I sing." 
The Christian world is coming more 
and more to realize that nations have 
moral duties. The role of the Samari- 
tan is not alone for individuals. 
Justice Brewer, of the Supreme Court 
of the United States, is right in saying 
that "a nation is a great moral entity, 
expressing in its life the sum of all the 
moral obligations which rest upon its 
individual citizens, and there may be 
times and circumstances when hu- 
manity calls upon it to look beyond 
dollars and cents, beyond personal 
sacrifices, and lend its exertions to 
succor other nations and peoples from 
tyranny, oppression and cruelty. There 
is a duty that strength owes to weak- 
ness, an obligation that civilization is 
under to barbarism. That the United 



(14) 

States are sensible to this duty and 
obligation denotes the progress of the 
altruistic ideal in our national life. It 
has been well said by another, "The 
appeal that determines duty is the cry 
of need; and duty, not ambition, is to 
write the story of the century just 
dawning." It does not follow that we 
should become a knight-errant in quest 
of adventure and imagine ourselves 
the general righter of wrongs and re- 
dresser of grievances among nations, 
but we are to meet obligations when 
imposed upon us. We must not shirk 
a manifest duty, or we will miss our 
manifest destiny. It has been humor- 
ously suggested that the good Samari- 
tan was not on the road to Jericho 
looking for a job when he found a 
robbed and beaten brother by the way- 
side. He was attending to his own 
business when circumstances threw in 
his way the opportunity to succor his 
brother. 

When we see that the development 
of humanitarian feeling has charac- 
terized the most advanced races, been 
a part of their progress, and a consti- 
tuent in their glory; when we note how 
sensible we have become that this is an 
ethical world, a divine universe, God's 
workshop, in which the moral law is as 
unfailing as the law of gravitation in 
this material world ; when we see that 
the universal hope is that this Republic 
may be placed on a foundation of 
righteousness, where the ages will not 
prevail against it; that it may become 
the foremost nation in recognizing that 
equity, justice and humanity are the 
winning forces of civilization, the 
moral trade-winds of the universe, we 
may well inquire what is the purpose 
of this altruistic development in con- 
nection with the tendency to expansion 
which American civilization exhibits. 
Is there not a warrant for the as- 
sumption that the United States have 
a mission to guide this force of altru- 



(15) 

istic feeling to beneficent ends in the 
amelioration and civilization of the 
inferior peoples within the sphere of 
our influence? 

The initial movement against the 
Spanish power in Cuba was inspired 
by the grandest purpose that ever 
moved a nation to arms. We struck 
the blow in the name of liberty, justice 
and humanity. We took the sword to 
redress the wrongs of others, not our 
own, and gave the world a sublime il- 
lustration of how nations as well as 
men in their ascent pass from the 
plane of the struggle for their own 
lives to that of the struggle for the 
lives of others, from self-regarding to 
other-regarding motives, a distinctly 
higher level. Service for others at the 
call of humanity is the noblest exercise 
of power and marks the highest out- 
look of national purpose and con- 
science. 

From this point of view the war 
with Spain appears to be unexampled 
in history, not alone in its origin, but 
in its results as well; and if our ex- 
pectations are not disappointed, it can 
not fail to be regarded by the dispas- 
sionate judgment of mankind, as far 
as the United States are concerned, as 
one of the few totally disinterested, 
stainless, and wholly virtuous acts re- 
corded in the history of the race. It 
may sound like rhapsody, but it is not, 
when Edward Everett Hale declares 
"that in one hundred days God has 
set forward the civilization of the 
world one hundred years." 

I have no doubt that even this ex- 
travagant hope will be, in a large mea- 
sure, realized if we have the nerve to 
embrace our opportunity, and the 
heroism to meet manfully the duties 
and responsibilities which the results 
of war impose. If the same elevated 
purpose and altruistic spirit shall 
characterize the last as gave just re- 
nown to the first act of the drama, im- 
measurable good will come to our- 



(16) 

selves, to the inferior peoples involved 
and to mankind. To ourselves in rais- 
ing our Republic into prominence as 
a co-equal with the great world powers, 
and making it a conspicuous factor in 
the world problems which loom in the 
near future, giving us that influential 
place among nations which belongs 
to a people who stand distinctly for 
freedom, humanity, justice, progress — 
the essential principles of western 
civilization. To the people of the 
islands of the sea in their gradual in- 
struction in the art of right living and 
in the principles of just government, 
in having planted among them the es- 
sential spirit of American institutions, 
education, law, order, industry, com- 
merce and self-control. To all man- 
kind in the impetus it will give to the 
development of those principles and 
qualities which are the product of the 
ethical system on which Christian 
civilization is founded, and which have 
through the ages and by the rivalries 
of races advanced toward that altruis- 
tic ideal which is the goal toward 
which humanity has tended from the 
beginning. 

This would be the realization of the 
dream of patriots and the aspiration 
of statesmen, that our country through 
its social, commercial and political in- 
fluence should become the means of 
diffusing civilization among the back- 
ward peoples in the Oceanic spaces to 
the west of us, as well as those on the 
shores of Asia. Senator Seward fifty 
years ago expressed the hope that the 
ripening civilization of the v/est would 
in its circuit of the world meet and 
mingle with the declining civilization 
of the east; and that a new and more 
perfect civilization would arise to bless 
the earth under the sway of our own 
cherished and beneficent institutions. 

That the situation is one we did not 
see from the beginning does not les- 
sen our responsibility. It is character- 
istic of important enterprises to lead 



(17) 

to results not contemplated in the ini- 
tial steps. It is a maxim of diplomacy 
that "no war ever left a nation where 
it found it." Events moved by a high- 
er guidance than our own have led us 
into the present situation, and I am 
sure the ethical warrant, the humani- 
tarian motive, and the altruistic spirit 
of our undertaking set the compass 
that points the way we are to go. In- 
deed, it is not too much to say that 
the obligations of duty toward man- 
kind as well as toward the people 
who have been brought within the 
sphere of our influence and our future 
usefulness imperiously demand that 
we hold and defend our title to the 
possession and sovereignty of the Phil- 
ippines until we have fully accom- 
plished the moral purpose which in- 
spired our undertaking in the begin- 
ning, and rounded out the noble des- 
tiny upon which we are just entering. 

That some rough surgery may be- 
come necessary, as Colonel Roosevelt 
suggests, must not deter us from a 
manifest duty. We had some rough 
surgery in our country in coercing a 
portion of our own people to acqui- 
esce in the government of the Union. 
We must undergo this ordeal if neces- 
sity imposes it in any portion of our 
wide domain. We have never shrunk 
from it in the past and never will in 
the future. That our way is beset 
with dangers no one doubts, but these 
must be incentives, not deterrents. It 
may be as Judge Grosscup suggests, 
that a providential hand, gloved in the 
smoke of battle, is leading us out of 
our isolation on to a moral elevation, 
where we can see more clearly the 
pointing of the finger of duty and des- 
tiny, and from which a wider outlook 
will open a view of the way we are to 
advance as the evangel of liberty, the 
messenger of civilization and hope to 
the inhabitants of our new posses- 
sions. 

The ratification of the peace treaty 



(18) 

has made us responsible for law and 
order in the Philippines before the 
world. The United States being in le- 
gitimate possession are in honor and 
good morals bound to hold control in 
trust for civilization, and discharge the 
duties which dominion and responsi- 
bility impose. This obligation we sol- 
emnly assumed when we destroyed 
Spanish authority and accepted a ces- 
sion of Spain's title and sovereignty. 
We are' morally bound to provide them 
with the best government their condi- 
tion will admit of. This duty can not 
be performed by leaving the people 
to govern themselves in any way they 
can. We must teach them the ways of 
good government. We must make 
conditions favorable to the growth of 
intelligence, integrity and honest liv- 
ing. We must teach them self-control, 
obedience to law, and make them ca- 
pable of self-government before we 
abandon them to the tender mercies of 
mercenary adventurers, unscrupulous 
military leaders, or to become a casus 
belli to involve the world in war. The 
national honor is involved in the man- 
ner in which we fulfill these responsi- 
ble obligations. The eyes of the world 
are upon us, and for the character of 
our conduct and the elevation of our 
principles we must answer to the de- 
liberate judgment of enlightened 
Christendom. 

There is but one safe path. The 
conscience of the American people 
must control our policy and guide its 
administration. The problem is not 
how to escape our responsibilities — 
any coward can solve such a problem 
— but how to meet them; not how to 
use these new possessions for our own 
benefit, but for their own and the 
world's. We have duties to the weal 
of the human race. What we do may 
give a facility to commerce, a stimulus 
to shipbuilding, an encouragement to 
intercourse, but that is not enough to 
justify us. We must find our justifi- 



(19) 

cation in the higlier motives of liberty, 
humanity, justice — duties we owe ttie 
people who have by the fortunes of 
war come under our protection — and 
the more sacrifice we made in dis- 
charging them the greater the glory 
that redounds to us. 

This should be our guiding principle, 
for in it is lodged the power and po- 
tency of the humanitarian purpose in 
our Eastern policy. The government 
we set up must be for the benefit of 
the people governed, not the govern- 
ment that will conduce most to the 
benefit of the United States, nor to 
some fraction of the people of the 
islands, or to the revolutionary, 
adventurous and ambitious leaders, 
but to the body of the people who in- 
habit the islands. Their peace, hap- 
piness, growth, education and civili- 
zation are the first objects of our 
solicitude, and all the agencies em- 
ployed should bend to these beneficent 
ends. 

The government of an inferior race 
is a trust, and the ruling and protect- 
ing people must never forget that they 
are in the position of trustees and 
bound like them to serve the objects 
of the trust. I agree with Dr. Lyman 
Abbott that to attempt to govern these 
islands for our own benefit exclusively, 
to utilize them for our trade, and ex- 
ploit them for our commercial advant- 
age merely, would be to re-enact the 
folly, if not to repeat the crime, of 
Spain. And any such attempt, how- 
ever disguised, the patriotism and con- 
science of the American people should 
promptly repudiate and condemn. 

These high considerations must be 
our guide in the oceanic policy we are 
about entering upon. No maxims of 
prudence, no considerations of eco- 
nomy, no sordid purpose can stand in 
the way of those ethical principles 
which alone afford justification for our 
new departure. We enter upon no un- 



(20) 

holy rivalry for the possessions of 
others. We have no adversary in all 
the world to which the old threat can 
be applied, "Delenda est Carthago." 
Dr. Abbott expresses the full scope of 
our purpose — to put an end to foreign 
tyranny, to terminate domestic an- 
archy, to establish the foundations of 
just and stable government and build 
the superstructure as fast and as far 
as the conditions of population make 
it possible. 

We seek to destroy no country that 
we may rear an empire upon its ruins. 
We propose only to take care of our 
own possessions and protect and safe- 
guard the weak and defenceless until 
they are capable of self-government. 
We will be a knight of chivalry among 
nations, bringing valor, heroism and 
statesmanship to the rescue of the vic- 
tims of oppression and wrong, and 
teaching the world that liberty and 
law, right and justice shall be lords 
paramount within the sphere of Ameri- 
can influence. 

In carrying forward our new and en- 
larged policy, which is made necessary 
by the new relations in which we stand 
to the world, and the new obligations 
to humanity and civilization we have 
assumed, we propose cultivating peace- 
ful relations with all the world. We 
are advancing according to the higher 
altruistic law governing the develop- 
ment of States and nations and the 
growth of empire; we are moving in 
harmony with that providential order 
by which all races are to come under 
the reign of a higher social regime. We 
are fulfilling the prophecy of the "Old 
Gray Poet" written forty years ago: 
"I am the chanter; I chant the world on 

my Western sea; 
I chant copious the islands beyond, thick 

as stars in the sky; 
I chant the new Empire, greater than 

any before, as in a vision it comes 

to me; 
I chant America, the mistress; I chant a 

greater supremacy; 



(21) 

I chant, projected, a thousand blooming 
cities, yet in time on those groups of 
sea islands; 
I chant my sailships and steamships 

threading the archipelago; 
I chant my stars and stripes fluttering in 

the wind; 
I chant commerce opening, the sleep of 
ages having done its work, races re- 
born, refreshed." 
I accept the thought of Henry Wil- 
son, uttered a quarter of a century ago 
in the Senate of the United States, 
when he said: "I believe, sir.that every 
race God has made is capable of im- 
provement, of civilization, of elevation, 
of Christianity, whether they dwell in 
the temperate or tropical regions of 
the eat-th. I believe Christian civiliza- 
tion will not be limited to lines of lati- 
tude, but will make the tour of the 
globe, lifting up all races and condi- 
tions of men I have undoubting 

faith that every portion of this globe 
is to be the home of civilized man." 

This, I believe, is the goal toward 
which the moral forces of this divine 
universe, the beneficent Power in and 
over all, are certainly tending. The poet 
hath seen it and foretold it in the lines 
of Sir Lewis Morris: 

"There shall come from out this noise of 
strife and groaning 
A broader and a juster brotherhood; 
A deep equality of aim, postponing 

All selfish seeking to the general good. 
There shall come a time when each shall 
to another 
Be as Christ would have him, brother 
unto brother. 
There shall come a time when brother- 
hood grows stronger 
Than the narrow bounds which now 
distract the world; 
When the cannons roar and the trum- 
pets blare no longer, 
And the iron-clad rusts, the battle-flags 
are furled, 
When the bars of creed and speech and 
race which sever 
Shall be fused in one hunmanity for- 
ever." 
He who opposes this progress fights 
against the nature of things, contends 



(22) 

with God, and must wage a losing bat- 
tle. In this majestic march from height 
to height of world beneficence we must 
not forget that America can only es- 
tablish the legitimacy of her title to 
that leadership which belongs to the 
English-speaking people by so minding 
her footsteps and guarding her action 
that every page of our annals will re- 
veal elevation of mind,rectitude of pur- 
pose, integrity of principles and supre- 
macy of conscience, tnus certifying to 
all the world that we are moving on 
the everlasting lines of equity, truth, 
humanity and liberty, following the 
foreshadowings of the ethical method 
of God in human history. 

If we adhere to these principles and 
aspire to these higher ideals; if we 
cultivate not a spirit of vain-glory or 
aggression, but rather, as James Bryce 
suggests, of pride and joy in the ex- 
tension of our language, our literature, 
our laws, our institutions, our com- 
merce, over the vast spaces of the 
earth and the islands of the sea, with 
a sense of the splendid opportunities 
and solemn responsibilities that exten- 
sion carries with it, and if we remem- 
ber at all times what it is the primal 
duty of Americans never to forget: 

"That man is more than nature, that 
wisdom is more than glory, that vir- 
tue is more than dominion of the sea, 
and that justice is the supreme good," 
then will the next triumph of Ameri- 
canism be equal to former ones, and 
the latest jewel in the diadem of 
American glory rival the earlier ones 
in royal splendor. 

"Dear country mine: this is the 
prayer we lift: Mayst thou be, Land, 
noble and pure as thou art free and 
strong. So shalt thou lift a light for 
all the world and for all time and 
bring the age of peace." 



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0'1783 143 7 " 





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